# McDonald’s AI Christmas Ad: When All Publicity Isn’t Good
Brendan Behan, the Irish writer, once said, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary.” So if an ad gets killed off within a couple of days of launching, does it mean it actually *was* bad publicity-a far cry from the more common refrain that all publicity is good publicity?
That certainly seems to be the case with McDonald’s Netherlands‘ 45-second AI-generated Christmas commercial, ‘It’s the Most Terrible Time of the Year’, which appeared on YouTube on December 6 and was pulled just days later after a wave of overwhelmingly negative feedback.
Because McDonald’s removed the ad, it’s no longer available from them, but it was still being hosted on AdForum,a marketing research site,at the time of publishing. You can watch it there in all its, er, glory. The AI-generated visuals show chaotic holiday mishaps-exploding trees,botched dinners,traffic jams with santa-all ending with the suggestion to “hide out in McDonald’s till January.”
## What was wrong with the McDonald’s AI advert?
The ad is unmistakably AI-generated, with all the usual problems that come with an algorithm generating content. Viewers quickly criticized it on social media for being “creepy,” “soulless,” and full of uncanny, jittery visuals. as is often the case with AI-generated video, the scenes flip rapidly because the model loses continuity after a few seconds. The physics are slightly off. The color grading is nasty. everything feels just a little wrong.
The other problem is that the premise itself felt tone-deaf. McDonald’s Netherlands said the ad, with all its horrible scenarios, was meant to reflect the stressful moments of the holidays, but admitted that for many people the season is still “the most wonderful time of the year.”
Even people who hate Christmas could probably come up with funnier mishaps than the ones shown here. Critics blasted the ad for being artificial, incoherent, and emotionally hollow.
Handled by a human team, with sharp copywriting and warm, relatable actors, you might be able to pull off a wry nod to holiday chaos that still left people feeling warm. But feeding the idea into an AI model turned a weak premise into something truly abominable.
## Producers defend McDonald’s ad
The CEO of Sweetshop, the production company hired by the ad agencies to create the spot, issued a defensive statement arguing that the team spent weeks crafting the ad and that it should be seen as a film shaped by human effort rather than a “swift AI trick.”
“for seven weeks, we hardly slept, with up to 10 of our in-house AI and post specialists at The Gardening Club
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